Alarm Management for human performance. Are we getting better?

Industrial alarm systems are crucial for process safety and operational efficiency of modern process industry oil & gas, and power plants. The advancement of distributed control systems (DCS) is still going hand in hand with a proliferation of alarms and a limited capacity of discernment in how to manage them to optimum level for good system performance and operators’ workload. Many industry standards and guidelines such as the The Engineering Equipment and Materials Users Association guideline EEMUA 191 and the International Standards on Auditing standard ISA-18.2, define recommended practices for effective alarm management. For instance, alarm rationalization at design stage is a key step in the alarm management lifecycle. It seeks to define the optimal and most effective set of alarms needed to keep the process safe and within normal operating limits. This paper aims to investigate the improvement of alarm management practices during the last 2 decades in the oil & gas industry, its current challenges and how does it affect human performance. It also provides a review of different existing regulations, standards and guidelines along with the performance evaluation metrics used in the field.